Subject: First World War Fiction

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Random Harvest James Hilton

A veteran's comfortable life is upended when long-buried memories of his time in the trenches of World War I come rushing back Charles Rainier's family feared him lost along with so many of Britain's youth during the First World War. But two years after he was reported MIA, he appears in a Liverpool hospital with no…Read More »
The General C. S. Forester

Herbert Curzon is a former cavalry officer who earned fortuitous distinction in the Boer War. He knew little then; he learned nothing since. But the army, desperate for officers in the opening months of WW I, hands Curzon, a new division to train. A few months later his formations dissolve at the Somme, hosed down b…Read More »
One Man's Initiation: 1917 John Dos Passos

Springing from the author's first-hand experience as an ambulance driver and Red Cross worker during World War I, this autobiographical first novel is noteworthy for its vivid and colorful evocation of France at that time and for its passionate indictment of war. The author's disillusionment with war for a time turn…Read More »
The Day of the Beast Zane Grey

Set in Middletown, USA, this tells the story of Daren Lane, who returns from World War I to a society of declining morals tired of hearing about the war. Time has marked them, and the battles of France have left them disabled, but what awaits them on land, beyond the empty dock? Who will be there for them, at home? …Read More »
Three Soldiers John Dos Passos

Three Soldiers is one of the major American war novels of the First World War, and remains a classic of the realist war novel genre. This powerful exploration of warfare's dehumanizing effects remains chillingly contemporary. This grimly realistic depiction of army life follows three young men as they contend with t…Read More »
The Tree of Heaven May Sinclair

The Tree of Heaven draws upon Sinclair's experiences in the First World War. Concerned with the Harrisoon family, it follows the three children, Michael, Nicky, and Dorothy, as they grow up in the 1900s and face the war as young adults. Dorothy hosts a sufragette meeting that lands her in jail, then trains with th…Read More »
The Romantic May Sinclair

The Romantic tells the story of Charlotte Redhead, a woman who, as the novel opens, has just been dropped by the married man with whom she was sexually involved. On a country walk she runs into John Conway, who, like her, is interested in learning to farm. Together they find jobs working on a farm in the Cotswolds…Read More »
The Black Gang Sapper

Although the First World War is over, it seems that the hostilities are not, and when Captain Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond discovers that a stint of bribery and blackmail is undermining England's democratic tradition, he forms the Black Gang, bent on tracking down the perpetrators of such plots. They set a trap to lure t…Read More »
A Man Could Stand Up Ford Madox Ford

The third volume of Ford Madox Ford's highly-regarded tetralogy Parade's End, chronicles the life of Christopher Tietjens, "the last Tory", a brilliant government statistician from a wealthy landowning family who is serving in the British Army during World War I. The novel opens on Armistice Day and follows the fo…Read More »
Towards the Goal Mary Augusta Ward

This volume is, in a sense, a sequel to England's Effort – one of the most successful of all war books. It is, in fact, a graphic revelation of the verification at the front of the prophecy England's Effort implied-that as England's effort was to the utmos…Read More »
Ruth Fielding Homeward Bound Alice B. Emerson

A bomb strikes the French hospital in which Ruth is working, and Ruth's shoulder is seriously injured. Ruth is forced to end her work with the Red Cross and head home to the United States. Just before Ruth boards the Admiral Pekhard, she learns that Tom Cameron is missing after a plane crash. Ruth fears that Tom may…Read More »
The Captain's Doll D. H. Lawrence

Set during World War I, a married Scottish soldier, instead of returning home, courts a displaced German countess in occupied Germany. The narrative revolves around a relationship that is not condoned by the society. The complexities of a love that is not reciprocated and whose boundaries are not defined. D. H. Lawr…Read More »
Light Henri Barbusse

Later novel by the French novelist, journalist and communist and author of Under Fire (Le Feu), which was based on his experiences during World War I and won the Prix Goncourt.
The Third Round Sapper

The death of Professor Goodman is officially recorded as a tragic accident, but at the inquest, no mention is made of his latest discovery–a miraculous new formula for manufacturing flawless diamonds at negligible cost, which strikes Captain Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond as rather strange. His suspicions are further arou…Read More »
Elizabeth's Campaign Mary Augusta Ward

How a conservative English landowner became a patriotic citizen, glad to take his part in the war, through tribulation and sorrow and the diplomatic management of his capable secretary, a passionately patriotic woman who showed him what loyalty to England means.
War Poems Siegfried Sassoon

The poems gathered here, which trace the course of the First World War, are an extraordinary testimony to the almost unimaginable experiences of a combatant in that bitter conflict. Moving from the patriotic optimism of the first few poems (…fighting for our freedom, we are free) to the anguish and anger of the …Read More »
The Return of Bulldog Drummond Sapper

While staying as a guest at Merridale Hall, Captain Hugh 'Bulldog' Drummond's peaceful repose is disturbed by a frantic young man who comes dashing into the house, trembling and begging for help. When two warders arrive, asking for a man named Morris - a notorious murderer who has escaped from Dartmoor - Drummond as…Read More »
Somewhere in France Richard Harding Davis

Even after they unmasked Talbot I had neither the heart nor the inclination to turn him down. Indeed, had not some of the passengers testified that I belonged to a different profession, the smoking-room crowd would have quarantined me as his accomplice. On the first night I met him I was not certain whether he was E…Read More »
Under Fire Henri Barbusse

This book follows a squad of French volunteer soldiers on the front in France after the German invasion. The book opens and ends with broad visions shared by multiple characters. The anecdotes are episodic in nature, each with an individual chapter title. In contrast to many war novels which came before it, Under Fi…Read More »
No More Parades Ford Madox Ford

No More Parades is the second novel in Ford Madox Ford's series of four novels depicting the meeting, courtship, and ultimate fulfillment of two modern heroes, Christopher Tietjens and Valentine Wannop, despite social condemnation, personal travails, and World War I. Ford poured his own experiences as writer, lo…Read More »
Bulldog Drummond Sapper

Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond, wealthy former officer of the Loamshire Regiment, dashing and strong (but not particularly handsome), places an advertisement in The Times expressing his desire for an adventure – which arrives in the form of a reply from a young woman concerned for her father. Blackmailers, communist consp…Read More »
Ruth Fielding In the Red Cross Alice B. Emerson

Now that the Great War has begun, Ruth and Helen take time off from their sophomore year at Ardmore College in order to devote their time to the Red Cross and the war effort. Ruth is soon transferred to the state headquarters, where she becomes concerned when she discovers that a woman, Mrs. Mantle, who had previous…Read More »
The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front Victor Appleton

Moving pictures and photo plays are famous the world over, and in this line of books the reader is given a full description of how the films are made–the scenes of little dramas, indoors and out, trick pictures to satisfy the curious, soul-stirringpictures of city affairs, life in the Wild West, among the cowboys a…Read More »
Some Do Not... Ford Madox Ford

With his acclaimed masterpiece Parade's End, Ford Madox Ford set himself a work of immense scale and ambition: "I wanted the Novelist in fact to appear in his really proud position as historian of his own time… The 'subject' was the world as it culminated in the war." Published in four parts between 1924 and 1928,…Read More »
Missing Mary Augusta Ward

Mrs. Humphry Ward tells the story of a pretty, clinging Englishwoman, who learns through the war's hard lesson the essential dishonesty of clinging. Work brings her spiritual freedom, as it has brought spiritual freedom to hundreds of women since the beginning of the war. Missing might be a contribution to the con…Read More »
Ruth Fielding at the War Front Alice B. Emerson

Ruth continues her work for the Red Cross and is soon transferred to a hospital that is on the war front. Ruth faces the very real danger of possible death but soon has a greater concern. Ruth asks a friend whether there is any news of Tom Cameron and learns that he has disappeared in Germany—and is suspected of wor…Read More »
England's Effort Mary Augusta Ward

That is the question which Mrs. Ward, replying to some doubts and queries of an American friend, has undertaken to answer in this series of letters, and every one who reads them will admit that her answer is as complete and triumphant as it is thrilling. Nobody but a woman, an Englishwoman of warm heart, strong brai…Read More »
Mr. Britling Sees It Through H. G. Wells

Mr Britling Sees It Through is a 1916 novel by H. G. Wells. It tells the story of a renowned writer, Mr Britling, and his family and friends in the fictional village of Matching's Easy, Essex, at the start of the First World War. The book is broken into three sections: Matching's Easy At Ease, in which American vi…Read More »
Tam o' the Scoots Edgar Wallace

Action-adventure fans, you've come to the right place. In ten pulse-pounding episodes, intrepid pilot Tam manages to find his way into a series of increasingly high-stakes scrapes. In the figure of the hard-living but honorable Tam, author Edgar Wallace has created one of the most realistic and endearing protagonist…Read More »
Echoes of the War J. M. Barrie

J. M. Barrie wrote plays to promote support for the war to end all wars. Yet they are not plays about war, but rather about parents and the children they send off to war. Though intended to foster support for WWI, from today's vantage point they can just as easily be interpreted as anti-war. In this play, two old …Read More »